Bechdel Test

We've all heard of the Bechdel Test. Hopefully. Please tell me you've heard of the Bechdel Test. It's kind of the world's favorite oft-misinterpreted method for monitoring how terrible women's representation is in film.

The female characters in films are typically not substantial, especially compared to the male characters they "share" the screen with. The women are often portrayed as one-dimensional and male-dependent. They are "damsels in distress," desperate to be saved by -- yeah, you guessed it, a dude.

Without women's stories, we see only half of our world. Without women filmmakers showing us what it really means to be a woman within what has long been a patriarchal society, we cannot appreciate the many struggles women have experienced, nor the sweetness of the victories won.

Most real men aren't heroic global fugitives, any more than are most women. So why do they get the fantasy, and we not? Maybe if more women wrote and directed movies we'd have more interesting women doing more interesting things onscreen.

I'm going to watch the final season of "Fringe." I wasn't really a fan of the overall storyline the Fox show pursued in Season 4; in the end, it didn't ultimately have the emotional resonance or cumulative power of Seasons 2 and 3.